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Beautiful hardwood floors can look wonderful, creating a true sense of style and individuality and a modern, contemporary feel within any home. There are many different types of real wood flooring, each with a look all its own. Distressed or distressed flooring, the hallmarks of parquet flooring, there are engineered wood flooring and strip flooring, as well as tile paneling and end-grain wood block flooring.

Aged and worn floors

Distressed hardwood floors or distressed flooring present an elegant and lived-in look. It looks, to everyone, as if your flooring has been laying for years and adds a certain authenticity to your home. Distressed and distressed floors are also a very practical option for both homes and commercial properties because they keep their good looks for longer. The rugged, distressed, and lived-in look won’t show the scuffs and scuffs caused by everyday use. They are also a popular choice because they never require sanding unlike other types of hardwood flooring.

parquet floors

Wood parquet flooring is a very popular choice and one of the reasons for this is that a parquet floor can be laid in many different ways, with many different patterns. Available patterns are Herringbone, Double Herringbone, Single Basket Weave, Treble Basket Weave, and Chevron. You can also opt for parquet panels, parquet borders, parquet motifs and parquet floor medallions.

engineered wood flooring

Engineered flooring can be installed that floats on a subfloor, is secretly nailed to existing wood subfloors, or fully glued to concrete or wood subflooring. Engineered floors are great if you need to reduce the noise level in a room and work well with underfloor heating systems. Engineered wood flooring is available in a wide range of sizes, from 14mm 3-strip flooring to 20mm wide structural engineered planks. strip floors

A wide variety of grooved and tongue-and-groove plank flooring is available in European oak, French oak, American black walnut, wenge, aged oak, reclaimed pine and merbau. Wood strip flooring, like engineered wood flooring, can be secretly nailed to wood subfloors or glued to concrete subfloors, but unlike engineered wood flooring, it is not recommended for use with systems underfloor heating. Strip flooring is very easy to maintain and can be sanded many times to freshen up its look, making it excellent value for money.

Mosaic Panels Mosaic Panels, also known as finger parquet, is an older style of flooring that was heavily used in the 1960s and is available in European oak, mahogany, teak and merbau. If you are attaching mosaic panels to a wood or concrete base, an epoxy glue should be used, but if the panels have a felt backing, an alcohol-based adhesive should be used. End Grain Wood Block Flooring

End-grain woodblock flooring is available in several wood species, including European larch, European oak, European smoked oak, pine, and fir. The wood is cut along the growth rings to produce a very different look to that achieved with more common plank flooring. It is extremely hard wearing and therefore ideal for areas that experience a lot of foot traffic.

Wood Floor Repair

From time to time, your hardwood floor will need a repair, whether it’s to remove scratches or stains or even to correct a floor that was poorly laid in the first place. Scratches can be sanded away with fine to medium sandpaper, but replacing stained floorboards is recommended because depending on how deeply the stain has entered the wood, you may have to sand quite hard to remove the stain and this could mean that section of the floor will not look the same as the rest.

If you’re lucky enough to inherit an original hardwood floor or are looking to restore a floor you covered years ago with carpet, you may need to make some repairs. This may involve replacing sections of the old wood flooring with new wood. If you need to do this, it is advisable to obtain wood that, as closely as possible, matches the original wood, in color and type.

After repairs have been made, the floor should be machine sanded to a fine finish and gaps filled. Once this is done, you can start staining the floor in your chosen color. Sometimes stains on your floor will only become apparent after you machine sand the floor or even after applying your chosen new finish. If this happens, you can choose to replace that section or leave it because it adds character to your floor.

The original parquet floors were glued down and nailed down with copper-headed pins. Over the years these eroded away leaving stains around each fixing. Unfortunately these stains cannot be removed, but it must be said, they are part of the character of the floors. When installing a new parquet floor, stainless steel headless pins are used to prevent this problem from happening again in the future.

Why is it important to hire a professional?

With the ever-increasing number of DIY shows on TV, many people try to restore their own hardwood floors only to find that it’s not as easy as it seems on TV. Professional hardwood floor restoration companies will have invested in the right machinery for the job and also in the right training.

Being inexperienced and using unforgiving machines can cause extreme damage to your hardwood floor and can reduce its lifespan by up to 50%, so it’s important to hire a company whose employees are fully trained and qualified in wood floor restoration. wood floor. This will ensure that the least amount of wood is removed during the sanding process and therefore extend the life of your floor.

Hiring a professional to do the job will leave you with a perfect finish and may even end up saving you money, after all it would be much more expensive to attempt the job yourself, rent the machines, buy the sandpaper and finishing materials, only to then have to hire the professionals to redo the job later because you’re not happy with the finish.

What should a person look for when choosing a flooring supplier?

When looking for a company to supply and install your flooring, you should look for a company that can demonstrate the quality of their work. Ask to see examples of their work or at least photos of it and ask them to produce genuine testimonials.

Ask to see proof of your qualifications. Suitably qualified UK flooring contractors will have passed the City & Guilds NVQ level 2 in floor coverings and should have passed the health and safety test there and hold a valid CSCS card for commercial work.

Take a look at the equipment they plan to use and ask what measures they’ve put in place to minimize dust, the last thing you want is to be cleaning the house for weeks after they’re gone.

Confirm that they offer a free, no-obligation survey and quote.